


Loss.jpg

by stockings_and_stuffies



Category: No Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Animal Death, Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:02:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21845620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stockings_and_stuffies/pseuds/stockings_and_stuffies
Summary: A reflection and inner monologue on loss.





	Loss.jpg

**Author's Note:**

> Just a few thoughts at 12:30 when thinking of my cat. Please do not read if you are triggered by death, or animal death. This is just me venting about my time with my cat. I get really emotional really easy and it starts off a bit stupid but gets really heavy really fast so i don't suggest reading it if you could be triggered or get squicked by semi dark themes. I just needed a place to put my thoughts out and this is the one place i could that nobody knows me personally.

Loss. A god tier meme. Four iconic panels of a sad story told hundreds and maybe thousands of times over into a funny little thing we share so many variations of that the original has lost all meaning. Loss.jpg is a loss within itself i guess. And while the meme has come and gone for many years, i think it still holds up for an unexpected laugh in the form of just a few specifically placed lines either badly photoshopped in or so meticulously placed that you couldn't call it a coincidence. 

But sometimes you can sit there and laugh at first glance, and the next moment think a little too hard about loss. And with the thought of it comes the feeling. The feeling of seeing your dad come home with a little black kitten that he and your mom had told you for years that you would never have, and the feeling of holding her for the first time, and the feeling of being so young and in love with the idea of having a new best friend you could call your own for what you thought could be forever. The first feeling of loss you get is just a small one, the familiar disagreement to any name you'd love to give her, that after so many years you've forgotten what your excited imagination had come up with. As the years go by and your heart begins to grow and the sadness you felt of losing what freedom you had thought you had with naming her had long since faded, you don't notice the loss you've created. Less time spent with your baby, neglecting her care for your own selfish young teen angst and selfishness. Barely cleaning the litter box and forgetting to feed her or give her water so someone else has to do it, and while she wasn't just your baby, she was still your responsibility. She was a baby that was never going to grow like a real baby would. She wouldn't one day be able to feed herself or learn to do everything you were supposed to do for her. She was never supposed to take care of herself.

And one day you wake up and its been many years of holding her close and eventually learning to take better care of her, but still not as good as you should have. She's been there for you to hold when you cry and some days she'd lay on top of you when you fell asleep on the couch, and other days she'd hurt you with her claws because you crowded her a little too much. She was still your baby, even when she had grown up. There are days when you were scared you would lose her, like that day she went missing for hours after your mom came home and it was raining and you cried. You cried and cried and searched all over the house and was afraid youd never see her again until your dad opens the screen door, and there she is. Your beautiful baby who you love with so much of your heart that some days you thought there might not be room for anyone else. She's wet and scared and she hides for a long time but you're so relieved to see her alive and unharmed that your heart doesn't feel so heavy and your stomach doesn't feel so full of bricks that you smile. Because you didn't feel loss that day.

A couple more years pass and you've moved houses, you're in the eighth grade and you walk to school every day. You made a new friend the year before and you spend almost every weekend together, and once again you forget about your baby just a little. Because you think that after all this time, she'll be okay, so you fall into the old routine of forgetting to feed her, and forgetting the litter box. And on the days you do remember you try and make up for it, so you feed her more than she needs, and you give her treats, and on the occasions you had some candy, she'd sit in your lap and you'd give her a few licks. And after a while you never notice how big she's gotten, or how her back bends so deep that her tummy touches the floor. Until she gets sick, and the vet says she has an infection because her litter box isn't cleaned as often as it should be, and you see the charts on the walls and how a nurse gets a small laugh at how cute she is with her chunky body and small head. So you start to notice. And you clean the box more and try and feed her a little less, but once again i guess you just forget. And again and again and again. And once more you experience loss.

Its been a few years with your best friend, but not as many as she should have had. She's still chunky with a small head and a bowed back and a waddle to her walk that she's had so long that you didn't realize that it wasn't supposed to be her normal. And she gets sick again. She gets so sick that she can't get up off the floor and she's asleep most days, and when you're at school all you do is sit and hope and pray to anybody who will listen that she'll get better. Because she's your best friend. The one friend you had begged for for years and once you got her you took it all for granted. She was with you through all your tears over girls who broke your heart, and friends who left you behind, and friends who tried to hurt you. She was there when you learned that you weren't who you always thought you were and you thought she'd be there for when you could finally say it out loud to your family. She was there when you got your first date with a boy you'd thought you'd spend forever with. She was there the day you had your last orange creamsicle that you shared with her because she wouldn't eat anything else, and she was there the next morning before you went to school with your mom getting ready to take her to the vet. She wasn't there when you got home. But you were so filled with childish hope that the vet could fix it. That no matter the cost or the time they would take her in and your mom would come right through that door holding her in the carrier and she would be okay again. But your mom calls and you pick it up and you choke. And again you feel loss.

You feel loss like a ton of bricks in your stomach and your heart so far up your throat that you can't speak anymore. You feel it crash in waves of guilt and shame and sadness and tears that don't stop even when you feel like you've sunk so far into the ground that the earth has swallowed you up and you've burned in the center. You feel every scar on your body weep and sting and you want so badly to disappear. If only you'd done better. If only you'd been better. If only you'd done everything you should have done right from the start then you'd still have your baby in your arms. Still hearing her zooming through the house at 2 am because she wants to play, still hear her scratching at your door because she wants to come to bed with you. You'd still be waking up with her weight on your back and a smile on your face because your heart is so full of love for your beautiful baby. Yet you lay in bed and weep for all the things you should have done but can't fix now. And your heart hangs heavy in a noose you tied yourself from all the things you've done to make her life so much shorter and you still feel the ache of where your heart had broken and out of your eyes leaked all the love you had for all the years you wasted on yourself because you thought you'd have forever to make up for it. And your heart sits heavy because the boy you'd spent almost a whole year with, the one who broke your heart twice was right. You killed her. It was your fault. And you wish you'd done better, and you wish you'd been better, and you wish you were better. Because at the end of everyday you still lie in bed even after almost 2 years of living without her. And some days you start sobbing out of nowhere because you remembered her face. And some nights you lie awake wishing you could have had a better burial, because she lays 40 feet from your house in a cheap old cardboard box that your dad had to bury sideways because the ground was too hard to dig any wider and you haven't visited her at all. Your baby lays asleep in the earth so cold and alone and so young and all at once your heart breaks all over again. The seams that were yearning to be mended have burst and it feels like every part of you has been thrown into the garbage disposal, chunky and small and bowed and broken. And you want to laugh but you can't. So you cry.

Because you feel loss. Again and again and again.

**Author's Note:**

> Ive been crying for 2 hours and this whole thing is a trainwreck but i needed to vent for a minute because i don't think i could share this with anyone i know. And i know that i was a terrible pet owner and i regret how awful i was at taking care of her, and i was a kid when i got her but i still should have taken better care of her because she was a living creature who was depending on me to give her a good and happy life. I neglected her a lot and i feel guilt for it every day, so please don't leave a comment telling me about how awful i was. I'm 20 years old and i know a lot better than i did when i first got her, and i should have done a lot better and known better when i was a teen but i was dumb and selfish and i didn't write this for anyone but myself. I needed a place to put my thoughts because i've bottled them up for so long and i don't know what i'd do if i didn't get them out now. my heart just feels really heavy right now and i'm feeling really vulnerable and i just hope that if someone reads this that they don't feel the same way. thank you for taking time out of your day to read this if you did


End file.
